The Hatching Cat of Gotham

Oscar Hammerstein had a farm (EIEIO). And on this farm he had a watermill, a windmill, a pond with a bridge and two boats, a few stone houses, a vegetable garden, a donkey, a turkey, a rooster, four hens, a near-sighted monkey, three peanut monkeys, several sheep, 1 duck and 4 ducklings.

The main attraction was a Holstein cow with her very own scantily clad (for the Victorian era) Swiss milkmaid who offered fresh milk in tiny glasses to visitors. The farm was on the roof of Oscar Hammerstein’s Theatre Republic on West 42nd Street.

The Venetian Terrace Garden at the Victoria Theatre

Before there was air conditioning (and Prohibition), many New York City theaters and hotels featured elaborate roof gardens where Gilded-age guests could dance and dine or enjoy a summer theater performance under strings of electric lights while enjoying the cool river breezes.

Oscar Hammerstein’s Paradise Gardens atop the Theatre Republic (aka Belasco’s) and Victoria Theatre was one of the more novel roof gardens of the era, to say the least.

In 1898, Oscar Hammerstein built the Victoria Theatre on the northwest corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, which was then in an area of Manhattan known as Longacre Square.

This remote neighborhood — previously occupied by large family farms and manure dumping grounds — was populated by carriage makers and stables, and was named for the famed district of London where royal carriages were designed and constructed. Today, this area is the heart of Times Square and New York’s Theater District.

Due to budgetary constraints, Oscar Hammerstein had to be quite resourceful when constructing the Victoria Theatre. Somehow he convinced the Market Livery Company to lease their land to him for 20 years with no money down.

He then used bricks and wood from the demolished stables to construct the theater. The Victoria’s floors were covered with old carpeting from an ocean liner, the seats were purchased second hand, and the hayloft from the stables was used to construct the back stage.

Atop the Victoria was a large roof garden that was initially called the Venetian Terrace Garden. The space featured a three-tiered grand promenade and was decorated with greenery and 2,000 electric lights. There was also a small theater-in-the-round, which was later expanded to seat 1,000 patrons.

To comply with the city’s building code, Hammerstein added eight exits and two elevators that took patrons directly from the street to the roof garden. The roof garden also had a glass-enclosed auditorium allowing for an open-air feeling with windows open on nice evenings, and protection from the elements on rainy nights.

The Victoria Theatre opened March 3, 1899, with the Rogers Brothers’ Reign of Error. The Venetian Terrace Garden opened on June 26 of that year.

In 1900, Oscar Hammerstein built the Theatre Republic adjacent to the Victoria on 42nd Street. He also enlarged the rooftop theater to seat 1,000 patrons and connected it to the roof of the Theatre Republic. The combined roof garden was renamed the Paradise Roof Garden.

While the main theater remained atop the Victoria, the Theatre Republic’s roof garden featured a much smaller stage that Hammerstein and his son, William, dedicated for Wednesday and Sunday matinees. These afternoon shows featured vaudeville and European novelty acts such as Augusta Rohoff’s Flea Circus from Germany, swimming exhibitions at the pond, jugglers, magicians, and various freak shows.

Newspaper ads show that animal acts were also very popular. Riccabona’s horses, Gillette’s trained monkey and dogs, Rosina Caselli’s midget dogs, a boxing kangaroo, Delita Delfora’s six performing cows, Goolman’s cat and dog circus, a talking dog named Don, and Robert’s trained cats and rats all made appearances in the first decade of the twentieth century. Although these acts were no doubt a hit with the public, the main attraction of the Republic’s roof garden was the Dutch farm and its live barnyard animals.

The Milch Cow and the Milkmaid

By 1908, the combined roof gardens were known simply as Hammerstein’s or “The Corner.” That year, a want ad in several New York papers advertised for a milkmaid to milk the cow in the “sylvan glade” at Hammerstein’s.

The ad stated “no homely applicants need apply.” (An article in The New York Times regarding the ad noted that “no homely milkmaid was ever in a sylvan glade, so it is desired that the applicants consider themselves honestly in the mirror before spending carfare.”) The ad also said the salary would be $40 a month “with board thrown in” (Where? At the little Dutch house on the roof?).

According to the Times, the milkmaid would wear “short skirts and pink” and be required to milk “the thoroughly tame cow” in the presence of spectators. The milkmaid would be able to keep some of the milk, and would not be required to attend to the ducks, goats, or any other animals.

A boy in uniform would assist by roping off the crowd. About a week after the ads appeared, “a buxom and rosy-cheeked Harlem milkmaid” was reportedly hired. The cow was milked by hand during intermission. (In 1910, an electric milking machine was acquired.)

The Suffragette Farmers

In June 1911, several New York newspapers reported on the “Suffragette farmers” at Hammerstein’s Dutch farm. According to the New York Herald, the farm’s milkmaid wore high-heeled slippers and silk stockings and another milkmaid in overalls served tiny cups of milk.

Two other suffragette shepherds in overalls were clipping the sheep with an electric clipper at “the baa-baa shop” while other women in overalls encouraged people to try their luck catching a real fish in the trout stream behind the barn. Over the bridge and past the calf pasture near the windmill was the blacksmith shop, where two “matronly smithies toiled at the forge.”

In the farmhouse, two women farmers smoked cigarettes and read newspapers while a man washed clothes and rocked a cradle with his foot. And scattered about the rest of the farm were women trimming hedges and painting roofs.

The End of Paradise and the Roof Garden Era

In the summer of 1908, Mr. Felix Isman, a real estate tycoon from Philadelphia who was slowly but steadily buying theaters in New York, said he had obtained an option on the Victoria and Belasco Theatre sites.

According to Isman, the ground leases contained a clause that said Hammerstein could not keep wild animals on the property. In response, Hammerstein admitted he had farm animals on the property, but none of these were considered “wild.”

He told the Times, “I have notified Mr. Isman that in deference to his desire for evacuation, I will begin to dispossess the monkeys from their cage and allow him to occupy it at once.” Hammerstein continued to hold onto the property and Isman set his sights on other theaters.

By the early 1920s, advancements in air-conditioning were rendering New York’s roof garden theatres obsolete and silent movies were luring patrons out of vaudeville theatres. Hammerstein jumped on this bandwagon early, selling the Victoria Theatre in May 1915 to S. L. “Roxy” Rothapfel, who eventually gutted the building to make way for 42nd Street’s first movie theater, the Rialto.

This theater changed hands a few times over the years, and was torn down in 2000 to make way for an office building.

The Republic, which had been taken over by David Belasco in 1902, became home to Billy Minsky’s burlesque shows in 1932. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned burlesque in 1942, and the Republic was converted into a movie theater, the Victory.

The Victory was a hot bed, so to speak, for porno movies in the 1970s, but it was restored as a legitimate theater in 1995. Today it is a performing arts center for children and families called the New Victory Theater.